When Jinzhao wore his usual grays and blues, it made him look flawless but light, a marble statue, a tapestry. Right now, he looked dangerous—the way a dark corridor was dangerous, the way a flickering bulb raised hairs on the back of your neck. If Chiboon was a clarion call for worthy hands to come worship, Jinzhao was a warning, a sword drawn and pointed at the throat. Tinseng wanted to swallow against the blade to feel it pressing against his Adam’s apple. He wanted, a little, to bleed. It had to be the color, he thought. Tinseng had almost never seen him in black before. He thought he might go mad from it.
He didn’t realize he’d walked toward Jinzhao until he stood in front of him.
“Dance with me, stranger?” he asked. Jinzhao’s eyes lingered on his mouth.
“Yes,” Jinzhao said, and dragged Tinseng onto the dance floor. Tinseng pressed up against him immediately, not at all coy.
“Does this offend your sensibilities?” Tinseng asked as their hips rolled against each other. “All this decadence?”
“Tinseng. I lived in Paris.”
“I know, I know. But you wanted to move back.”
Jinzhao’s mouth thinned. He pulled Tinseng by his hip so there wasn’t even the hint of space between them.
“Some values are more important than others,” Jinzhao said, the bastard, but Tinseng wouldn’t be bested with one blow.
“And what values are these?” He ran his hand from Jinzhao’s shoulder to his arm, plucking at the turtleneck’s lush material.
“Identity. Joy.” Jinzhao’s arm tightened around his back. “‘The less you eat, drink, and buy books; the less you go to the theatre and the dance hall . . .’”
“‘The less you express your own life, the more you have,’” Tinseng picked up the quote, one of his favorites, “‘and the greater is your alienated life.’”
“Should we count the most meager form of life as the standard?”
“No, you’re right. Well, Marx was right, you’re—”
Jinzhao kissed him; it was Tinseng’s favorite way of being told to shut up.
When Jinzhao pulled away, he murmured against Tinseng’s lips, “I do not want to live an alienated life.”
Tinseng hid his face in Jinzhao’s shoulder, afraid to find out he was dreaming.
“I want to marry you,” he told Jinzhao’s neck. “Barring that, I’m going to suck you off in the bathroom until you cry. Either/or, Jinzhao, your choice.”
“Why are they mutually exclusive?”
“Because I say so.”
“Do you.”
“You say otherwise?”
“What if I did?”
“Then we’d be at an impasse, wouldn’t we?”
They were grinning—well, Tinseng was grinning. Jinzhao looked like he was going to eat Tinseng raw and bloody in the street. Tinseng was just about to march Jinzhao to the bathroom when the band finally stopped fussing with their instruments and the singer leaned into the microphone.
“One, two, three, four!” The guitar struck a chord familiar to every civilized person on Earth. The entire bar erupted. In this, the first year of Beatlemania, things were about to escalate.
“Oh my god!” Tinseng cried, bouncing up and down on his toes. He looked at Jinzhao, who was already looking at him, hat crooked on his head from Tinseng’s hands in his hair, his eyes hooded with want and joy and a thousand things Tinseng couldn’t name yet, but he would learn, he’d learn. A fizzy feeling expanded in his stomach, and he grabbed both Jinzhao’s hands to join the rest of the club in sheer, uncomplicated revelry. Everyone had streamed onto the floor to participate in the elation of belonging: an entire room throwing their heads back to yell the same lyrics, moving as one body, abandoning themselves to the music and dancing themselves anew.
Later, the band played a short set of ballads. Most of the crowd took a break, clearing the floor for couples. “May I?” Jinzhao asked politely, as if the answer would ever be no. They swayed more than danced to a modest Sinatra cover. The piano lingered on its phrases as if they could all put off closing time together if only they danced slower, kissed longer. Tinseng felt safe in Jinzhao’s arms—and wasn’t that odd? Like the world wasn’t all long shadows out to get them—like the words in love songs really were true.
“We should buy this record,” Tinseng murmured in Jinzhao’s ear. “I want to dance to this again.”
Jinzhao didn’t answer with words.
They didn’t return to the boat until well past 2:00 a.m. Around midnight, Jinzhao had fallen asleep in a booth; they had piled their jackets on top of him, half-prank, half-nest. They’d shaken him awake when they’d left, and he’d been cute the whole way back, blinking and monosyllabic. Tinseng couldn’t wait to tease him about it in the morning.
He dropped off Jinzhao in the room and went back out to get a pack of cigarettes; he’d run out tonight and he would be desperate for one tomorrow with the hangover he was likely to have. As he was feeding bills into the machine, he felt someone come up behind him. Tensing, he turned around expecting Grodescu.
“Didi,” he said, laughing in relief, “don’t sneak up behind someone.”
“We need to talk,” Cheuk-Kwan said, “come on.”
“At nearly 3:00 a.m.? Can’t it wait?”
“No, it can’t, because you’re always—you don’t have a lot of time these days. Chiboon’s already passed out, let’s go.” He turned to lead Tinseng to his room.
“Just say it here,” Tinseng complained, rubbing his hand over his face.
“Your room or mine. Not here.”
“No, no, we’ll wake Shan Dao. Come on, there’s no one around. What, are you finally going to confess you broke that vase when we were twelve?”
